There's a
really huge variety of stuff that can happen when you're driving a car. In my lifetime, I've seen:
- A signal light malfunction such that I had a green turn arrow across the path of oncoming traffic, where the oncoming traffic also had a green light.
- The axle break on the van going around the cloverleaf in front of me (and props to the driver for not rolling the van after the tire rolled off - I'd be surprised if autonomous drivers were trained for that).
- A pickup truck drop an extension ladder in the freeway. It hit in such a way that it started spinning. The centrifugal force then made it extend. So there's this growing, spinning, sliding thing in the middle of the freeway. It was the single hardest to avoid thing I've ever experienced.
- A baby stroller rolling across the crosswalk across my path (unaccompanied by any adults!) just as my light turned green.
- Hydroplaning.
- Torrential rain.
- Show blowing across the road in the grip of 100-mile-an-hour winds.
- Dirt roads that have rocks in the middle that can take out your oil pan.
- Failing to clear my car of all the snow on it before I drove it. When I hit a red light and hit the brakes hard, the remaining snow dumped on the road in front of me. I then started to slide on what had been (until a moment ago) a clear road.
- Having a semi in the next lane hit a groove in the pavement that was full of water, sending a wall of water across my windshield, rendering me abruptly blind. On a curve. With a semi beside me.
Sure, you can train the autonomous driver to handle each one of these. But that's just stuff that I personally have seen. You've made a list of goofy circumstances to train for. But did you get all the ones that actually happen? No, you didn't. How's it going to do on some strange situation that it never trained for? Such situations are going to occur.
